[ISEA2020] Artist Statement: Navid Navab — tangibleFlux, plenumorphic, chaosmosis

Artist Statement

Tags: Digital, Film, Scopitone Festival, Sonic

“tangibleFlux expresses the ontogenic moment that vividly moves around the cosmos. In its microcosms, the three-dimensional movement of spheroids under magnetic harmony, look like a paranormal phenomenon, like the dance of life itself.”
_advertimes journal, Kotaro and Takashi Koguchi, Japan, 2018.09.11

“I felt a mysterious force that makes me forget even the sense of time and space due to the whirlpool of movement of entities that cannot be seen at the beginning nor at the end.”
_100BRANCH Magazine, Shibuya, Japan, 2018.10.15

In search for the hidden mysteries of matter from the borders of table-top astrophysics and natural fiction, three microcosms orchestrate states of sensory access to the phenomenological emergence of order out of chaos. tangibleFlux ? plenumorphic ? chaosmosis is an installation that invites participants to intimately encounter the ontogenesis of vital patterns through the spontaneous formation of temporal textures that emerge from material-energy fields.

Physically investigated through collaboration with forces of complex harmonic motion, patterns-of-interaction between magnetism, gravity, and light spiral out of theories of complexity and into an improvisatory dance of hallucinatory forms. Eventually, the kinetic event unveils messy realness chaosing into balance: things doing… stuff seeking a minimum-energy-state under magnetic flux. Sensually binding, spatially confusing, and temporally unsettling, tangibleFlux pulls everything into immediate vibrational relation with its vertiginous ritual.

Each microcosm engages unique entanglements. Microcosm no.1 “plenumeia” suspends a miniature ball above unstable magnetic fields. The ball shoots, twists, and turns towards a stability which it never sustains, leading to the spontaneous emergence of hypnotic patterns. Chaotic behaviour of the ball is then sonified and haptified in poetic sync, confusing the senses and bringing the body into prominence. No.2 “plenumélliptique périgée”, stirs a large array of spheroids in an intensive magnetic whirlpool. Elliptical textures emerge and morph to survive induced instabilities… energetic upheavals at the edge of chaos surrender to the seemingly static power of an underlying orbicular resonance of atomic topologies. No.3 “plenumophileia” holds a sensual swamp of voids, curves, and sog, where gestures prevail shapes: where pixel is lube, architecture is pollen, and objects are but excited clumps in a puddle of time.

  • Navid Navab (IR/CA) is a media alchemist, interdisciplinary composer, and tabletop cosmologist. Interested in the poetics of schizophonia, gesture, and embodiment, his work investigates the transmutation of matter and the enrichment of its performative qualities. Navid uses gestures, rhythms and events from everyday life as a basis for real­time compositions, resulting in augmented acoustical­ poetry and painterly light that enchant improvisational and pedestrian movements. Navab has led large scale interdisciplinary research projects at IRCAM Paris, CRIMMT McGill Montreal, Computer Aided Medical Procedures Group TUM Munich, Milieux and Hexagram networks at Concordia Montreal, and CIID Copenhagen. Navid currently co-directs the Topological Media Lab, where he leverages phenomenological studies to inform the creation of computationally-enchanted environments. TML projects serve as investigations in the construction of fresh modes of cultural knowledge and the critical studies of media arts and techno-science, bringing together practices of speculative inquiry, scientific investigation and artistic research-creation practices. His works, which which take on the form of responsive architecture, site specific interventions, interactive scenographies, kinetic sculptures, and multimodal performances, have been presented at diverse venues such as: Ars Electronica, Contemporary Arts Museum of Zagreb, Nemo Biennale Paris, Japan Society NY, Kapelica Gallery Slovenia, Canadian Center for Architecture, HKW Berlin, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Digital Arts Biennial Montreal, Musiikin Aika Finland, SONICA Scotland, Eufonic Spain, and milanOltre Festival Italy. navidnavab.net